Double Chocolate Cheesecake

 

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I blogged about Artisan Cheesecakes, a little shop dedicated to cheesecake in Bruntsfield. Well, it inspired me. With over 170 flavours, it was hard not to be inspired to be honest. So when my flatmates' birthday came around, I thought it was a perfect excuse to make my own, especially as he's allergic to eggs, so normal cakes don't really work for him. As it was a birthday, I wanted to do something really indulgent, so I doubled my usual cheesecake recipe, added melted milk and white chocolate to the cheesecake mix itself and piled five types of chocolate bar on top, as well as more melted white and dark chocolate. I'll be the first to admit, it was pretty obscene. But come on, birthday!

It's easy to make, no bake so perfect for summer and although it's best left in the fridge overnight you can get away with making it about three or four hours ahead of time. With the pile of chocolate on top it really is quite a show stopper, and makes an excellent centre piece for any table.

Double Chocolate Cheesecake

Base
400g digestive biscuits
135g Unsalted butter (melted)

Filling
400g Full fat Philadelphia (no scrimping and using half fat, it won't set)
200g Icing Sugar
370ml Double Cream
160g of White Chocolate
160g of Milk Chocolate

Decoration
Your choice of chocolate bars to pile and melt.

1. Smash your biscuits into fine crumbs. Add the melted butter and combine. Press down in the bottom of a loose bottom cake tin, then pop the tin into the fridge to cool while you make the filling.

3. Sieve the icing sugar into the cream cheese and combine.

4. Whisk the double cream until it's nice and thick.

5. Melt both of the types of chocolate (in different bowls).
6. Put half of the double cream in a different bowl, and one type of chocolate into each bowl. Mix until completely smooth.
7. Put half of the cream cheese and icing sugar mixture into each cream and chocolate bowl. Again, whisk until smooth. 
8. Evenly spread the milk chocolate mix over the biscuit base. Then spread the white chocolate mix over that. Leave to cool.
9. Immediately before serving pile up your chopped up chocolate bars and drizzle melted chocolate over the top.

Breakfast at The Riding House Café

 As I'm writing this, I'm really wishing it was this time last week again, when I was a mere hour away from tucking into this absolute feast of a breakfast. Now I face a day of writing my Masters dissertation. It's significantly less exciting. But we will not dwell on that. Back to breakfast.

Keen to avoid paying the outrageous prices we felt sure would accompany food at Wimbledon, Ben and I decided to fuel up with a huge breakfast and then just have a light snack we could take with us, and pick up the eating again with dinner later. After some extensive googling, I found The Riding House Cafe. It was close to our hotel, and within easy walk of a bakery I wanted to check out (priorities).

I was pretty delighted with my choice, the food was delicious and the restaurant was lovely inside. Ben had pancakes with a side of bacon, because sometimes more is more. I can honestly say the pancakes were the thickest, fluffiest pancakes I've ever seen. I'm not sure I'll bother ever making Ben pancakes again, because I have no idea how to get them this thick. Not a clue. (Do you know? Can you help me master a monster pancake?)  

I had the chorizo hash brown, served with poached eggs, mushroom and spinach. It was really good, the eggs were cooked perfectly and spinach was a great addition, because it lightened up the hash brown, which was delicious but very heavy. I didn't manage to finish it all, partially because it was so heavy but also because the portion was enormous. You definitely get what you pay for here.

We also had a juice each, which were freshly made and all named with a bicycle theme for the Tour de France, which was pretty fun. If you're in the area, or even if you're not, this place is definitely worth visiting. They're open all day too, and if the rest of their food is anything like their breakfast, they are on to a winner.

Wimbledon Weekend

             

Pimms and tennis in the sunshine. The ultimate way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Particularly when the tennis is being played at Wimbledon, and you're actually there to watch it rather than watching it on a tiny screen in the corner of your living room like usual. Ben and I were lucky enough to get tickets for the final Saturday (as it turned out, Ben was lucky enough to go earlier in the week too. Not jealous or anything), so I took an afternoon off work on Friday and we sped down to have a lovely weekend in London.

I almost tried to detail it all in one post, then I realised that was ridiculous, because we ate an awful lot, and the post was starting to rival War and Peace in length. So instead, today I'm just sharing my Wimbledon pictures. 

We sat on Henman Hill to watch the ladies final, and then watched a surpsingly good girls doubles on Court One. We finished off the day watching the invitational doubles with some of the pros from back in the day. You might be able to tell from the photo that they weren't exactly playing by the rules, and it was great fun to watch. For the third set they stopped messing around and actually went for it, and it was seriously impressive. I got even more jealous of Ben being able to see more of the matches earlier in the week. 

We finished off the afternoon with some strawberries and cream. We were at Wimbledon. We couldn't not. Although it was so warm, I sort of wished I'd just got the strawberries. Soaking up the atmosphere put me so much in the mood for tennis, I'm so sad Wimbledon is over for another year! At least there's the American Open to look forward to at the end of the summer. Are you a tennis fan, or do you get confused by thousands of people following the track of a yellow ball like dogs?